Moving back up the results pages ?

[dgoodchild]

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I have a site which was doing quite well for SEO - hovering between #6-9 on Google UK, but I recently decided to mask my aff links. The fact that the site dropped to page 7 straight after seemed too much of a coincidence, so I reverted to how it was before, a few days ago.

Google hasn't crawled the site since 24th Aug, but my question is this - does Google remember that it had masked links and keep it penalised (if that's what happened), or does it see it afresh each time it crawls ? And if so, how long before I can see an improvement ?

It's not a huge issue as I mainly rely on PPC anyway, but more free visitors is always good of course

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Matt Seigneur]

how did you mask the aff links?

[dgoodchild]

how did you mask the aff links?

I just linked to an internal page with an auto-redirect. Probably not the right choice (hindsight is perfect as always), but it was a first attempt so I thought I'd choose the easiest initially.

[Matt Seigneur]

show me the redirect used - i very much doubt it was that to be honest

[dgoodchild]

show me the redirect used - i very much doubt it was that to be honest

I used the following ;

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.awin1.com......"></meta>

[Matt Seigneur]

sending a pm

[Brendon]

>> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;

Oooooow. You broke your site That's considered the equivalent of 301ing your pages to a different site. They aren't crawling because you've told them the site doesn't exist...

[dgoodchild]

Really ? I'm not sure.

I'm using method 1 of Redirecting or Cloaking Affiliate Links

[Matt Seigneur]

Just for the benefit of anyone else reading, i personally redirect aff links as follows:

<?
header ('Location: http://www.affiliatelinkhere.com'); 
?>

There are plenty of ways to do it though.

Matt